Golden age of arcade video games

The golden age of arcade video games was the era when arcade video games entered pop culture and became a dominant cultural force. The exact time period is disputed, but key moments include the release of Space Invaders in 1978 and the vector-basedAsteroids in 1979—moments made possible by the increase in power and decrease in cost of computing technology. This led to the rise of both video game arcades and video games in other media, such as songs, cartoons, and movies like 1982's TRON. Other iconic games from this era include Pac-Man, Defender, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and Centipede.

Although the exact years differ, all timelines overlap in the early 1980s. Technology journalist Jason Whittaker, in The Cyberspace Handbook, places the beginning of the golden age in 1978, with the release of Space Invaders.[1] Video game journalist Steven L. Kent, in his book The Ultimate History of Video Games, places it at 1979 to 1983.[2] The book pointed out that 1979 was the year that Space Invaders[3] – which he credits for ushering in the golden age[4] – was gaining considerable popularity in the United States,[3] and the year that saw vector display technology, first seen in arcades in 1977 with Space Wars, rise to prominence via Atari's Asteroids. However, 1983 was the period that began "a fairly steady decline" in the coin-operated video game business and when many arcades started disappearing.[2]

The History of Computing Project places the golden age of video games between 1971 and 1983, covering the "mainstream appearance of video games as a consumer market" and "the rise of dedicated hardware systems and the origin of multi-game cartridge based systems".[5] 1971 was chosen as an earlier start date by the project for two reasons: the creator of Pong filed a pivotal patent regarding video game technology, and it was the release of the first arcade video game machine, Computer Space.[6]

Sean Newton, 3D arcade model builder and author of the book Bits, Sticks, and Buttons states that the defining transitional point which finally ended the first era of arcade gaming (known as the "Black and White Age") and subsequently ushered in the Golden Age was with the North American release of Midway's Space Invaders. The game brought forth with it the power of the microprocessor, as well as a cult phenomenon impact which had only been felt up to that point by Atari's Pong. Following Space Invaders, Atari's Asteroids and Namco's Pac-Man further solidified the strength of the Golden Age.[citation needed]

The golden age was a time of great technical and design creativity in arcade games. The era saw the rapid spread of video arcades across North America, Europe, and Asia. The number of video game arcades in North America, for example, more than doubled between 1980 and 1982;[8] reaching a peak of 10,000 video game arcades across the region (compared to 4,000 as of 1998).[9] Beginning with Space Invaders, video arcade games also started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations and many other retail establishments looking for extra income.[10] Video game arcades at the time became as common as convenience stores, while arcade games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders would appear in most locations across the United States, including even funeral homes.[11] The sales of arcade video game machines increased significantly during this period, from $50 million in 1978 to $900 million in 1981,[8] with 500,000 arcade machines sold in the United States at prices ranging as high as $3000 in 1982 alone.[12] By 1982, there were 24,000 full arcades, 400,000 arcade street locations and 1.5 million arcade machines active in North America.[13] The market was very competitive; the average life span of an arcade game was four to six months. Some games like Robby Roto failed because they were too complex to learn quickly, and others like Star Fire because they were too unfamiliar to the audience. Qix was briefly very popular but, Taito's Keith Egging later said, "too mystifying for gamers ... impossible to master and when the novelty wore off, the game faded".[14] At around this time, the home video game industry (second-generationvideo game consoles and early home computer games) emerged as "an outgrowth of the widespread success of video arcades" at the time.[15]

In 1980, the U.S. arcade video game industry's revenue generated from quarters tripled to $2.8 billion.[16] By 1981, the arcade video game industry in the United States was generating an annual revenue of over $5 billion[1][17] with some estimates as high as $10.5 billion for all video games (arcade and home) in the U.S. that year, which would be three times the amount spent on movie tickets in 1981.[18] The total revenue for the U.S. arcade video game industry in 1981 was estimated at more than $7 billion[19] though some analysts estimated the real amount may have been much higher.[19] By 1982, video games accounted for 87% of the $8.9 billion in commercial games sales in the United States.[20] In 1982, the arcade video game industry's revenue in quarters was estimated at $8 billion[21] surpassing the annual gross revenue of both pop music ($4 billion) and Hollywood films ($3 billion) combined that year.[21][22] It also exceeded the revenues of all major sports combined at the time,[22] earning three times the combined ticket and television revenues of Major League Baseball, basketball, and American football, as well as earning twice as much as all the casinos in Nevada combined.[23] This was also more than twice as much revenue as the $3.8 billion generated by the home video game industry (during the second generation of consoles) that same year;[21] both the arcade and home markets combined added up to a total revenue between $11.8 billion and $12.8 billion for the U.S. video game industry in 1982. In comparison, the U.S. video game industry in 2011 generated total revenues between $16.3 billion and $16.6 billion.[24]

Prior to the golden age, pinball machines were more popular than video games. The pinball industry reached a peak of 200,000 machine sales and $2.3 billion revenue in 1979, which had declined to 33,000 machines and $464 million in 1982.[20] In comparison, the best-selling arcade games of the golden age, Space Invaders and Pac-Man, had each sold over 360,000[25] and 400,000[26] cabinets, respectively, with each machine costing between $2000 and $3000 (specifically $2400 in Pac-Man's case).[27] In addition, Space Invaders had grossed $2 billion in quarters by 1982,[22] while Pac-Man had grossed over $1 billion by 1981[28] and $2.5 billion by the late 1990s.[29][30] In 1982, Space Invaders was considered the highest-grossing entertainment product of its time, with comparisons made to the then highest-grossing filmStar Wars,[22][31] which had grossed $486 million,[31] while Pac-Man is today considered the highest-grossing arcade game of all time.[32] Many other arcade games during the golden age also had hardware unit sales at least in the tens of thousands, including Ms. Pac-Man with over 115,000 units, Asteroids with 70,000,[11]Donkey Kong with over 60,000,[33]Defender with 55,000,[34]Galaxian with 40,000,[35]Donkey Kong Junior with 35,000,[33]Mr. Do! with 30,000,[36]
and Tempest with 29,000 units.[37] A number of arcade games also generated revenues (from quarters) in the hundreds of millions, including Defender with more than $100 million[17] in addition to many more with revenues in the tens of millions, including Dragon's Lair with $48 million and Space Ace with $13 million.[38]

The Golden Age also saw developers experimenting with vector displays, which produced crisp lines that couldn't be duplicated by raster displays. A few of these vector games became great hits, such as 1979's Asteroids, 1980's Battlezone and Tempest and 1983's Star Wars from Atari. However, vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies due to the high cost of repairing vector displays.[citation needed]

Developers also experimented with laserdisc players for delivering full motion video based games with movie-quality animation. The first laserdisc video game to exploit this technology was 1983's Astron Belt from Sega,[52][53] soon followed by Dragon's Lair from Cinematronics; the latter was a sensation when it was released (and, in fact, the laserdisc players in many machines broke due to overuse). While laserdisc games were usually either shooter games with full-motion video backdrops like Astron Belt or interactive movies like Dragon's Lair, Data East's 1983 game Bega's Battle introduced a new form of video game storytelling: using brief full-motion video cutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages, which would years later become the standard approach to video game storytelling. By the mid-1980s, the genre dwindled in popularity, as laserdiscs were losing out to the VHS format and the laserdisc games themselves were losing their novelty.[54]

Others tried new concepts and defined new genres. Rapidly evolving hardware allowed new kinds of games which allowed for different styles of gameplay. In 1980, Namco released Pac-Man, which popularized the maze chase genre, and Rally-X, which featured a radar tracking the player position on the map.[51] Games such as the pioneering 1981 games Donkey Kong and Qix in 1981 introduced new types of games where skill and timing are more important than shooting as fast as possible, with Nintendo's Donkey Kong in particular setting the template for the platform game genre.[60] Namco's Bosconian in 1981 introduced a free-roamingstyle of gameplay where the player's ship freely moves across open space, while also including a radar tracking player & enemy positions.[61]Bega's Battle in 1983 introduced a new form of video game storytelling: using brief full-motion videocutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages.[54] Other examples of innovative games are Atari Games' Paperboy in 1984 where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers, and Namco's Phozon where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen. The theme of Exidy's Venture is dungeon exploration and treasure-gathering. One innovative game, Q*Bert, played upon the user's sense of depth perception to deliver a novel experience.

Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was Space Invaders. The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coinsin Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game[62][63] (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years,[64][65] and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation).[65] It would soon have a similar impact in North America, where it has appeared or is referenced in numerous facets of popular culture. Soon after the release of Space Invaders, hundreds of favourable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium aired on television and were printed in newspapers and magazines. The Space Invaders Tournament held by Atari in 1980 was the first video game competition and attracted more than 10,000 participants, establishing video gaming as a mainstream hobby.[66] By 1980, 86% of the 13–20 population in the United States had played arcade video games,[67] and by 1981, there were more than 35 million gamers visiting video game arcades in the United States.[68]

The game that most affected popular culture in North America was Pac-Man. Its release in 1980 caused such a sensation that it initiated what is now referred to as "Pac-Mania" (which later became the title of the last coin-operated game in the series, released in 1987). Released by Namco, the game featured a yellow, circle-shaped creature trying to eat dots through a maze while avoiding pursuing enemies. Though no one could agree what the "hero" or enemies represented (they were variously referred to as ghosts, goblins or monsters), the game was extremely popular. The game spawned an animated television series, numerous clones, Pac-Man-branded foods, toys, and a hit pop song, "Pac-Man Fever". The game's popularity was such that President Ronald Reagan congratulated a player for setting a record score in Pac-Man.[69]Pac-Man was also responsible for expanding the arcade game market to involve large numbers of female audiences across all age groups.[70] Though many popular games quickly entered the lexicon of popular culture, most have since left, and Pac-Man is unusual in remaining a recognized term in popular culture, along with Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Mario and Q*bert.

In 1983, an animated television series produced for Saturday mornings called Saturday Supercade featured video game characters from the era, such as Frogger, Donkey Kong, Q*bert, Donkey Kong Jr., Kangaroo, Space Ace, and Pitfall Harry.

Arcade games at the time affected on the music industry, revenues for which had declined by $400 million between 1978 and 1981 (from $4.1 billion to $3.7 billion), a decrease that was directly credited to the rise of arcade games at the time.[71] Successful songs based on video games also began appearing. The pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) sampledSpace Invaders sounds in their 1978 self-titled album and the hit single "Computer Game" from the same album,[72] the latter selling over 400,000 copies in the United States.[73] In turn, YMO would have a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.[74] Other pop songs based on Space Invaders soon followed, including "Disco Space Invaders" (1979) by Funny Stuff,[72] "Space Invaders" (1980) by Playback,[75] and the hit songs "Space Invader" (1980) by The Pretenders[72] and "Space Invaders" (1980) by Uncle Vic.[76] The game was also the basis for Player One's "Space Invaders" (1979), which in turn provided the bassline for Jesse Saunders' "On and On" (1984),[77][78] the first Chicagohouse music track.[79] The song "Pac-Man Fever" reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold over a million singles in 1982,[80] while the album Pac-Man Fever sold over a million records, with both receiving Gold certifications.[81] That same year, R. Cade and the Video Victims also produced an arcade-inspired album, Get Victimized, featuring songs such as "Donkey Kong".[82] In 1984, former YMO member Haruomi Hosono produced an album entirely from Namco arcade game samples entitled Video Game Music, an early example of a chiptune record[83] and the first video game music album.[84] Arcade game sounds also had a strong influence on the hip hop,[85]pop music (particularly synthpop)[86] and electro music genres during the early 1980s.[87] The booming success of video games at the time led to music magazine Billboard listing the 15 top-selling video games alongside their record charts by 1982.[15] More than a decade later, the first electroclash record, I-F's "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1997), has been described as "burbling electro in a vocodered homage to Atari-era hi-jinks",[88] particularly Space Invaders which it was named after.[89]

The period saw the emergence of a gaming media, publications dedicated to video games, in the form of video game journalism and strategy guides.[22] The enormous popularity of video arcade games led to the very first video game strategy guides;[95] these guides (rare to find today) discussed in detail the patterns and strategies of each game, including variations, to a degree that few guides seen since can match. "Turning the machine over"—making the score counter overflow and reset to zero—was often the final challenge of a game for those who mastered it, and the last obstacle to getting the highest score.

Some of these strategy guides sold hundreds of thousands of copies at prices ranging from $1.95 to $3.95 in 1982[95] (equivalent to between $5.00 and $10.00 in 2019).[96] That year, Ken Uston's Mastering Pac-Man sold 750,000 copies, reaching No. 5 on B. Dalton's mass-market bestseller list, while Bantam's How To Master the Video Games sold 600,000 copies, appearing on The New York Times mass-market paperback list.[95] By 1983, 1.7 million copies of Mastering Pac-Man had been printed.[97]

Custom cabinet with novel dual-joystick controls, using two 2-way joysticks for movement, and periscope-like viewer.[104] Early use of first-person pseudo 3-D vector graphics. It is widely considered the first virtual reality arcade game.[105] Also used as the basis for a military simulator.[106]

Early use of speech synthesis was also translated into other languages in Europe. Indestructible adversary appears in order to eliminate lingering players. This became an oft-employed device (e.g. Hallmonsters in Venture) to increase challenge and limit play duration of arcade games.

Driving game with overhead, scrolling maze. First game to feature a bonus round, background music,[110] and a radar.[51] When released, was predicted to outsell two other new releases: Pac-Man and Defender.

Laid foundations for platform game genre as well as visual storytelling in video games,[60] and introduced a carpenter protagonist named Jumpman, a character who would evolve into Nintendo's mascot, Mario in subsequent games.

Early scrolling shooter that scrolls in multiple directions, and allows shooting in four directions,[111][112] using four direction buttons, similar to dual-stick controls.[113] Along with Fantasy, Super Cobra and Bosconian, is significant as being among the first video games with a continue screen[114]

While up to this point, military themed games featured vehicular combat such as ships, aircraft or tanks, this is one of the first of many 80s games to feature commando-style infantry ground combat (guns, grenades and tanks) as the theme.

An early side-scrolling (and diagonal-scrolling) platformer, featuring vine-swinging mechanics, run & jump sequences, climbing hills, and swimming. Almost immediately re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a lawsuit from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate claiming character copyright infringement on the character of Tarzan. This version changed the Tarzan character to a pith helmet-wearing white explorer.[116]

After Sega's Turbo revolutionized sprite scaling with their third-person cockpit racer, Namco brought 16-bit graphics to the arcade, dropped the player's perspective closer to being directly behind the car, and added dramatic curves to the track. The game also incorporated product placements for companies (including licensee Atari) on passing billboards.

Nintendo used higher resolution foreground sprites displayed over lower resolution backgrounds achieving comparable visuals to select games in the Midway Card Rack (MCR) system[119]. This display method was previously used on Nintendo's Sky Skipper, from which many Popeye cabinets were converted. Donkey Kong was originally intended to be made with Popeye characters, but at the time, Nintendo was unsuccessful at securing the licensing from King Features Syndicate. [120]

An early laserdisc video game, which allowed film-quality animation. The first arcade video game in the United States to charge two quarters per play.[129] It was also the first video game to employ what would become known as the quick time event. This game is one of three arcade games that are part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection, along with Pac-Man and Pong.

First game to use stereo sound. It was also the first to use the 49-way, custom-designed optical joystick that Williams had produced specifically for this game. Notable for appearance of menacing villain.

For arcade games, success was usually judged by either the number of arcade hardware units sold to operators, or the amount of revenue generated, from the number of coins (such as quarters or 100 yen coins) inserted into machines,[134] and/or the hardware sales (with arcade hardware prices often ranging from $1000 to $4000). This list only includes arcade games that have sold more than 10,000 hardware units.

The golden age cooled around the mid-1980s as copies of popular games began to saturate the arcades. Arcade video game revenues in the United States had declined from $8 billion in 1981 and $7 billion in 1982 to $5 billion in 1983,[146] reaching a low of $4 billion in 1986.[147] Despite this, arcades would remain commonplace through to the early 1990s as there were still new genres being explored. In 1987, arcades experienced a short resurgence with Double Dragon, which started the golden age of beat 'em up games, a genre that would peak in popularity with Final Fight two years later.[148] In 1988, arcade game revenues in the United States rose back up to $6.4 billion, largely due to the rising popularity of violentaction games in the beat 'em up and run and gunshootergenres.[147] After yet another relative decline,[148] U.S. arcade video game revenues had fallen to $2.1 billion by 1991,[149] by which time the sales of arcade machines had declined, with 4000 unit sales being considered a hit at the time.[150]

One of the causes of decline was new generations of personal computers and video game consoles that sapped interest from arcades. In the early 1990s, the Genesis (Mega Drive outside most of North America) and Super NES (Super Famicom in Japan) greatly improved home play and some of their technology was even integrated into a few video arcade machines.

The Golden Age of Video Arcade Games spawned numerous cultural icons and even gave some companies their identity. Elements from games such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Centipede are still recognized in today's popular culture, and new entries in the franchises for some golden age games continued to be released decades later.

^James A. Inciardi; Robert A. Rothman (1990), Sociology: principles and applications (2 ed.), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 540, ISBN0-15-582290-X, To cash in on the Pac-Man video mania, game developers also introduced Asteroids, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Tron, and hundreds more. By 1982, arcade games had become a multi-billion dollar industry. In that year alone, almost 500,000 machines were sold at prices ranging as high as $3000 each.

^"Electronic Education", Electronic Education, Electronic Communications, 2 (5–8), p. 41, 1983, In 1980 alone, according to Time, $2.8 billion in quarters, triple the amount of the previous years, were fed into video games. That represents 11.2 billion games, an average of almost 50 games for every person in the US.

^ abEdward S. Roschild (June 21, 1982), "Videodisks, microcomputers form integrated systems", InfoWorld, InfoWorld Media Group, 4 (24), p. 16, ISSN0199-6649, retrieved February 25, 2012, The figure of more than $7 billion for last year's video arcade game revenues is a conservative one. Some industry analysts estimate that the real amount spent on video games was as much as five times higher.

^ abcEverett M. Rogers; Judith K. Larsen (1984), Silicon Valley fever: growth of high-technology culture, Basic Books, p. 263, ISBN0-465-07821-4, Video game machines have an average weekly take of $109 per machine. The video arcade industry took in $8 billion in quarters in 1982, surpassing pop music (at $4 billion in sales per year) and Hollywood films ($3 billion). Those 32 billion arcade games played translate to 143 games for every man, woman, and child in America. A recent Atari survey showed that 86 percent of the US population from 13 to 20 has played some kind of video game and an estimated 8 million US homes have video games hooked up to the television set. Sales of home video games were $3.8 billion in 1982, approximately half that of video game arcades.

^ ab"Space Invaders vs. Star Wars", Executive, Southam Business Publications, 24, p. 9, 1982, They compare this to the box office movie top blockbuster Star Wars, which has taken in only $486 million, for a net of $175 million.

^ abSteve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond : the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, Prima, p. 352, ISBN0-7615-3643-4, In 1982, Universal Sales made arcade history with a game called Mr Do! Instead of selling dedicated Mr Do! machines, Universal sold the game as a kit. The kit came with a customized control panel, a computer board with Mr Do! read-only memory (ROM) chips, stickers that could be placed on the side of stand-up arcade machines for art, and a plastic marquee. It was the first game ever sold as a conversion only. According to former Universal Sales western regional sales manager Joe Morici, the company sold approximately 30,000 copies of the game in the United States alone.

^Bracelin, Jason (May 22, 2007). "House music finds a home". Las Vegas Review-Journal. p. 1E. Retrieved September 12, 2013. A native of Chicago, where house was first popularized, Saunders is credited for producing and releasing the first house single, "On and On", on his own Jes Say Records label.

^Mark J. P. Wolf (2008), The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond, ABC-CLIO, p. 275, ISBN0-313-33868-X, What are the best-selling video games? There are a number of factors to consider when attempting to answer this question. First, there are several different types of video games, which makes comparisons difficult, or perhaps unfair. Arcade games are played for a quarter a play (although some are 50 cents, or even more), while home games are bought outright, and their systems must be purchased as well.

Brian Ashcraft ; with Jean Snow. ; forewords by Kevin Williams; Crecente, Brian (2008). "sixty-five+thousand" Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers (1st ed.). Tokyo: Kodansha International. ISBN4-7700-3078-9. Retrieved February 12, 2012. Jumpman hopped over barrels, climbed ladders, and jumped from suspended platform to suspended platform as he tried to rescue a damsel from his pissed-off pet gorilla. The game was a smash, and sixty-five thousand cabinets were sold in Japan, propping up the then-struggling Nintendo and laying the groundwork for Nintendo and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto to dominate gaming throughout the 1980s and beyond.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)

United States: 67,000 of Donkey Kong

Bienaimé, Pierre (January 13, 2012). "Square Roots: Donkey Kong (NES)". Nintendojo. Retrieved April 8, 2012. Donkey Kong sold some 67,000 arcade cabinets in two years, making two of its American distributors sudden millionaires thanks to paid commission. As a barometer of success, know that Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are the only arcade games to have sold over 100,000 units in the United States.

^Steve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond : the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, Prima, p. 132, ISBN0-7615-3643-4, Atari sold more than 70,000 Asteroids machines in the United States. The game did not do as well in Europe and Asia, however. Only about 30,000 units were sold overseas.

^Steve L. Kent (2001). The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond : the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. Prima. p. 224. ISBN0-7615-3643-4. Gottlieb sold approximately 25,000 Q*Bert arcade machines.

^Steve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond : the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, Prima, p. 225, ISBN0-7615-3643-4, Cinematronics sold more than 16,000 Dragon's Lair machines in 1983, for an average price of $4300. Coleco purchased the home rights to the game, giving Cinematronics an additional $2 million.

^ ab"Video Games Are an Exercise In Annihilation". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. May 30, 1989. Retrieved March 13, 2012. In 1988, players dropped enough change at video arcades to generate revenues of $6.4 billion, up from $4 billion in 1986. Many of those quarters were powering machine guns and fists of fury. According to the April issue of RePlay magazine, 29 of the 45 most popular video games are action games. Three of the top five games listed by PlayMeter were ones with war or fighting themes.